Always Another Side

The other half of this perfect arc of a rainbow can be found over on the Yin Side. I actually stopped my car on the freeway Sept. 1 to take this shot, it was such a nice positive thing to see first thing in the morning. Half-and-half pictures because I don't have a wide angle lens on my little Casio Exilim, which for nearly five years has been faithfully doing duty not only for the everyday snapshots like this, but also on travel to the U.S. Mainland and China, at weddings and funerals, the ordination of an RC Bishop and the destruction of a sand mandala by Buddhist monks, recording my teacher's Chinese painting demonstrations and my own feeble efforts. The pocket digital workhorse is looking kind of beat up, but after all this time I am pretty adept with its controls. Only 5.0 megapixels, it seems obsolete, but, like my 20-year-old car, it still goes the distance. It does the one job it was designed for: no phone calls, no internet access, no calendar, just photography.

I only hope to become so adept with my new car radio...will it take four years? After I shot the rainbow, I managed to tune to the local NPR outlet to hear some news, some things to think about.

I learned from someone who runs some kind of "senior" home health care service that 7 out of 10 deaths in the growing population of folks 60+ are ultimately due to falls. I haven't been aware of being in such a demographic since the last time I was thought to be a "senior," the 45th anniversary of which condition is coming up next month. I won't make the high school reunion on the East Coast, but I have been thinking much about those of us on the leading edge of the Big Boom. I was so excited then to be a "senior," ascending the side of the rainbow leading to a wide open future; how quickly we reach the zenith and slide down the other. This melancholy thinking does remind me that I must step up my qigong exercises, one movement of which is called "past the rainbow." Qigong does promote balance, which I can always use more of, and thus, prevent falls.

Next news item was about affordable housing in Kaneohe. The state has spent $60 million on affordable studios and 2-bedroom units to rent to qualifying (poor) folks for ~$365-$865 a month. For perspective, my condo maintenance fee (which seems to be financing deforestation in my "woodland" complex) is just in the middle of that range.

As I was contemplating this, the next item had to do with affordable hotels in Makena, a Maui resort neighborhood adjacent to the ultra-pricey Wailea. The Makena development will feature rooms in the "affordable" $200-250 range, a value, I guess, if you can't pay the $400 to $500 nightly costs in Wailea. Such contrasts. I do hope that the folks in the cheap studios in Kaneohe have better manners than some of the Wailea guests. I have a friend who works in a dress shop there who has on more than one occasion found urine in the trash cans in the fitting rooms. Which just suggests that money doesn't buy decency.

After these curious news reports, I turned the radio off (having learned how to do that) to drive in silence (not counting the Miata's purr), contemplating the sun rising from behind the mauka cloud banks. Later that night, I watched the same sun set off my lanai. It gave me a sense of balance.